Emanuel Announces $17 Million Expansion For Walter Payton Prep

CHICAGO (CBS) — Mayor Emanuel says he’ll use a special tax fund to expand the North Side’s much desired Walter Payton College Prep High School, WBBM Political Editor Craig Dellimore.

Payton is one of the city’s most competitive high schools and the principal there has been telling Mayor Emanuel for months there are many more applicants than seats so the Mayor has now announced a $17 million annex will be built at the school, expanding its capacity and international baccalaureate programs by 300 to 400 students.

“So if you are in the Back of the Yards, you have a new IB choice right in you neighborhood with a new school and the first ever public library in a school,” said Emanuel. “In Lincoln Park, we have a new IB, Senn we have a new IB. We also have that at Taft, at Clemente,” said Emanuel.

Emanuel Announces $17 Million Expansion For Walter Payton Prep

But the Chicago Teachers’ Union reportedly calls the plan unfair because it creates winners and losers where selective enrollment schools prosper and not neighborhood schools.

Craig DellimoreCraig Dellimore, political editor for WBBM, joined the station in 1983 after working for several years with the Associated Press Radio Network in...More fromCraig Dellimore